Sisters of the Night
by seriousish
Summary: They look so alike that you can picture them growing up together, pretending to be sisters. And when they get older, they still brush each others' hair and sleep in each others' beds, saying "Dear sister," Mina reading romance novels out loud while Lucy lies with her head in Mina's lap and shares the oranges she's peeling for a between-meal snack.
1. Chapter 1

Lucy and Mina had always looked alike. They'd grown up next to each other, and reflected each other to such an extent that it was like one was mimicking the other, though who precisely was the mirror had been lost in girlhood. Pale white skin and night-black hair; not blonde, not golden, not fair. They'd been called ravens by the other children, and they cawed to each other before they went to bed at night. Through open windows across the lawn, they cawed each other that they were still of a feather.

Once, they had switched clothes. Lucy had run home to Mina's house and Mina to Lucy's, and the servants hadn't even noticed, not with the way they followed each others' voices. Mina had felt like Lucy was speaking through her, ordering the staff around, and Lucy had a quiet thrill in proving Mina wrong. She'd said Lucy could never behave as well as she did, the Murrays' little angel.

On their way to school the next morning, they had switched back. Both of them, in some way, had expected to be found out. At least by their parents, either at morning breakfast or being tucked in. But the kiss before bedtime and the morning grapefruit had been perfunctory. They walked in silence that day. They knew then they were alone. If their families didn't care about them, they would have to care for each other.

Thus was their favorite game invented: pretending to be sisters. It persisted well into their marriageable years, the two brushing each others' hair and sharing one bed, saying "dear sister" and "darling sister" and "sister mine" so often that it slipped out of the parlor and into society. The grand dames and aunts found it charming, how close they were. Their suitors found it aggravating, how they never separated, a pair joined at the hip. Not one could be wooed without the other as chaperone.

It came as an idle thought in the bath. Mina was recalling her Victor Hugo, remembering a woman who had sold a tooth to support her child. For such a noble cause, Mina wondered what she would give up. She was a sacrificing sort, Lucy had always teased her for it, but one of the things she would not bear to part with, not for all the jewels of Arabia, was the memory of reading one of her novels while Lucy laid with her head upon her lap, peeling an orange she'd snuck between meals and sharing its slices with her waywardly-born sister.

Lucy told Mina stories too. Of adventuring in the East End with some stout drinking companions to protect her virtue, of dressing in her brother's clothing to visit the emporiums of the Orient that were not for feminine eyes, of inviting rogues to steal into her bedroom at night and ply her with all their talent. Mina didn't know how much of it was made up. Part of her didn't want to know.

Lucy didn't get married, of course. Mina did, of course. A solicitor with good breeding and impeccable manners. Lucy detested him on principle, but buried it for Mina's sake.

After a while, she found it hard to keep hating him when she saw how happy Mina looked. She felt a little betrayed, with someone beside her making Mina so very happy. But then, she had no right to complain with as many male adventures as she'd been on. She had no claim on Mina whatsoever.

At the wedding, Mina looked like an angel. Lucy couldn't say the same of herself. In the white of a maid of honor, she looked as false as she did tawdry. She could believe what was whispered of her. She was a fallen woman, a slattern, a harlot.

She felt horrible in all ways during Mina's honeymoon. Being apart from her, being alone, even feeling sad when her friend was so happy. She didn't go to a doctor; she knew what kind of feminine worries would be ascribed to her. She trusted to a proven commodity. After his time in the dark of Africa, her father had sworn by poppy. There was a den of such iniquity behind the billiards club, as respectable as opium could be made.

The chap who owned it, an Australian with a sob story longer than the Queen's wedding train, had no objection to a lady's presence. She added to 'the sensuous atmosphere,' said he. Which she took to mean she was marked as prettiest and cleanest of the night women who tended the lotus eaters. She enjoyed the confusion, she relished men trying to bed her with increasing directness, until they offered her pocket watches and medals. She laughed them all away. The stronger sex had Mina, they wouldn't have her.

And then, Dracula.

At first, she thought he'd been cast whole from the opiate haze. He didn't move like a man. His feet fell firmly, as if under weight greater than his gaunt frame, but other than that, he was absolutely mutable. From step to step, he was a ballerina en pointe, a stalking wolf, an old man wanting a cane. It made him timeless, captivating.

"A rose growing out of weeds, the life being choked from it. How it longs for the garden." His English was impeccable, but a foreign accent tinted his words like a drop of blood in water.

He interested Lucy. "Or maybe such a flower would prefer to be plucked, and worn around town so that one and all could marvel at her beauty."

He smiled. His teeth were perfect. Then.

Some of the others, the hunters, later said that Dracula's bite was the fiercest pain they'd ever known. Not to Lucy. It'd felt like nothing to her. Absolute numbness, deeper and blanker than the opium. It'd blotted out all thought of Mina or her husband.

She didn't remember the rest of it. Or if she did, she didn't want to. Lucy sleep-walked between… feedings, only coming alive in that River Lethe unlife. She was told she ran a fever, acting unlike herself. Revealing garments, lascivious behavior, coarse joking. Lucy thought that sounded very much like herself, only concentrated. And while the men were good enough to shuffle and flummox in the face of her indecency, kindly old Van Helsing could be counted on to furnish her self-confession. She had… _appealed _to Mina. Ripping off her own white nightgown, calling out passionately, groping herself. Not to worry, Dracula was gone now, his curse on her had ended.

Lucy thought some of it remained, or some other curse had been laid on her. She couldn't stop imagining that lost night. Had Mina run from the room, aghast, or had she lingered? Had she considered?

Mina didn't talk to her about it. Lucy was still bedridden, her reflection pale and anemic. Mina only visited her to bring dinner. Hearty soup, orange juice, fresh fruit, and the red vials. No matter how the menu changed, the red vial always came with it. She didn't ask what it was. She knew the taste.

"Where does it come from?" she did ask.

"We all take turns… donating." Mina didn't like the subject, but she'd bear it. She'd borne worse. "It's the only way to keep you alive now."

"Why?"

"I don't know. The doctors are doing tests—"

"No. Why… the other thing."

"Why do you still draw breath? Lucy, we had to save you. You're my best friend. What shall I do in your absence?"

Each woman thought her friend had suffered the worse. Lucy had only been bitten; she couldn't imagine being romanced by the creature, having it conceive of her as its mate. And Mina, she considered herself as only having been wooed. What was that to having the beast prey on you night after night, sinking its cold fangs into living flesh until it'd had its fill?

And both of them pitied Jonathan, Mina's loving husband. Defiled by Dracula and his vixens, he malingered in an asylum, starving of esoteric hungers. As time passed and the hunters embarked upon their separate ways, it became simply Lucy and Mina once more, trapped in the House of Harker. A fund set up by Dr. Seward paid for the weekly collection of blood to wean Lucy, said Mina.

And under Mina's care, Lucy's recovery seemed to come along so nicely! Lucy arose earlier and earlier, making up for time lost to sleep. In the twilight hours, she accompanied Mina on promenades up and down the grounds. ("What if a ruffian should appear?" "I shall protect you, sweet sister.") Once more, Lucy came to stand the sunlight that once would've blistered her were it not for the lotion that so tainted her color. The only evidence of that allergy now was the dark glasses and wide-brimmed hats she wore at the height of the day. It was almost like old times, except for the nights. When Mina changed the bandages on the wounds that never seemed to heal. She wiped Lucy's throat clean of the fresh blood that pulled her bandages to her skin like it didn't want them to escape.

Every night Mina tended her, and every night two perfectly rounded holes were left to be covered once more. Bloodless, bottomless, more like Lucy was missing pieces of herself than like she'd been bitten. Mina loathed them, and how they mocked her. The only way she could tolerate removing the bandages was seeing them as the warm water of her efforts left them. Shrunken orifices, colorless enough to disappear.

Lucy didn't share her feelings. In fact, she had come to love her punctures.

She loved when Mina touched them. Or maybe she just loved how Mina touched them. Not gingerly repulsed like some others, those who _dared. _Acceptingly, like they were just a part of Lucy, something she'd been born with. She didn't even seem to notice how sensitive they were. How good it made Lucy feel to have a wet washcloth run over them. Not hard. Just firmly enough to be felt, and yet so tender, so lovingly. It was enough to make Lucy forget how she got the scars and just think of the sensation.

"Dear big sister," she would say when Mina had finished wrapping her marks, hiding them from sight (Mina looked forward to it, Lucy did not). "Taking such good care of me." And she'd kiss Mina on the cheek as gently as she'd pick a flower.

She didn't start having the dreams until the blood ran cold, the food lost its taste, the water didn't quench. When her thirst could diminish no further, clinging to her more violently than even Jonathan's did. The cold, flat blood started to come less as sustenance and more as… appetizer. Something in her was going unfed.

And she dreamt of her fever, and what she'd said to Mina. What she'd done. Or what'd wished she'd done, or what she feared she'd done, or what they lied to her she'd done. Every night, the horror of seeing Mina covered in blood. Every morning, waking up soaking wet and not with sweat. Then one day, Mina interred her wound once more and turned her head for their customary affection. Lucy moved in obligingly, meaning only to admire the gleam in the apple of Mina's cheek. Instead, she felt her lust shoot from her mouth like a word spoken in anger.

A fang penetrated Mina's perfect visage. Just a little, barely even the tip, but enough to bead Mina's cheek with blood. And, unforgivably, she kept her devil tooth in Mina, both of them helpless as she slid it down Mina's face. Toward her neck.

Lucy couldn't have known, but Mina felt no pain. The fangs were that sharp, the motion that slow, a caress and not a cut. Equal parts scalpel and kiss, action showing the lineage of both its parents. Lucy stopped at the jawline she'd always so admired, and with a half-mad, hungry noise, she wrenched herself away. Mina stood there. She trembled. In Lucy's absence, dead air rushed in and whipped at her cut. Now she felt pain. An answering moan to Mina's hollowed her mouth. It, too, was indistinguishably pain and pleasure.

Whether spurned on by a victim's pain or eager to comfort a friend, Lucy rushed back in. Her tongue broke from her lips. Like a creature with a mind all its own, it started where Mina's neck met her shoulder. It slithered up, seeking, needing, devouring the lowest drops of blood running down Mina's neck like grapes on a vine. Mina shuddered, not quite in fear or protest, but nervousness. Lucy didn't heed it; she was responding to a far deeper urging. Like a towel cleaning her off, Lucy's tongue traveled the length of the slit. It took the blood with it to leave only a scarlet line in Mina's skin, like a brand.

Mina finally breathed. A drop of blood slicked from the cut and she felt pain once more. Lucy saw her twitch in hurt; worse, look at Mina with lost eyes. Not even fear. Confusion.

Lucy licked her lips. And, realizing what she'd done, she scrubbed her hands furiously on her bloody mouth. "I didn't mean it," she said. Trying to convince both of them. "I didn't, I didn't, I—"

Lucy fled before she could hear the word she knew to be on Mina's trembling lips. Monster.


	2. Chapter 2

Mina stayed out all night. Sometimes, she saw the flash of a lantern in the distance, or a voice calling her name, but more often not. She would've thought there'd be more of a mob, but then, she wasn't much of a monster. Only a danger to one. The woman she loved enough to call sister.

She wept and it was red.

After an eternity in the dark, the sun came up. Its rays wounded but didn't kill. Lucy begged for it to take her, to reduce her to smoke, to scatter her ash to the winds so Mina wouldn't even find the dust of her. But it left her upon the Earth like a stain.

"Lucy!" Mina cried, and she was begging. Lucy turned around, away from the sun. The shadows were cool on her skin.

Mina looked like Dracula had tasted of her once again. Her eyes were sunken from lack of sleep, her skin was pale from the cold, her coat muddy and nightgown torn from looking for Lucy. She had the beauty of one of Poe's women, preserved forever in death, immortality by way of wasting illness. And Lucy was her disease.

Lucy ran to her like they were sisters once more. She took grave-cold Mina in her arms. Whatever else was wrong with her, Lucy's breath was still warm. She exhaled on Mina's hands and watched color bloom in them.

"I'm sorry," she said. It was better this way. She could apologize to Mina and make her see why they had to part. She would see her cured.

"It wasn't your fault, I don't blame you. I love you."

The words rushed from Mina and Lucy shook her head.

"I'm not worthy of love. I've _fallen._ I've descended past all possibility of redemption."

"Not so!" Mina cried, pulling her hands from Lucy's grasp to wind them around Lucy's back. Now her warm breath fell on Mina's blushing face. "No, never!"

Lucy's breath was coming faster, making Mina's cheek redder. "I tasted your blood, Mina. I liked it. I wanted more."

"But you stopped." Like a squirrel that had stared at a nut too long to resist snatching it up, Mina bolted to Lucy's face and kissed the tip of her nose with pure affection. "You controlled yourself."

Scoffing, Lucy tried to untangle herself from Mina. "A well-behaved monster—still a monster."

Mina held on all the more. "My monster. You count yourself a beast, but what would you call a husband who beats his wife, or cuckolds her, or abandons her? I'd take you over the best of their lot." Another kiss. Lucy could feel Mina's lips getting warmer. "Over the best of any lot."

"Don't say such foolish things!" Lucy ordered, finally exerting her strength. The strength of the night. She broke from Mina's grip and, taking her by the shoulders, held her still. "Even the lowest of husbands can give you love, children, security! All I can do is take."

After the initial display of force, Lucy had relaxed her grip on Mina. She did not want to hurt her, and she'd expected the girl to be cowed. Instead, she thrust herself out of Lucy's hands and into her body, embracing her from breast to belly. It was merely the prelude, the foothold from which Mina launched her invasion of Lucy's mouth. Her lips conquered, occupied, reigned. "Take my love." Mina conquered Lucy anew with each kiss. "Take my heart." Lucy surrendered to her on each short parting. "Take my blood."

It took the thought of hurting Mina to make Lucy push her away. "No! I could not! Not ever!"

Mina brushed aside the arms which Lucy was trying to keep them separate with like a mass of cobwebs. Lucy turned away from any action of her lips, but could do nothing to stop Mina's arms from linking behind her and pulling them close. Now it was Mina's warmth she felt, burning hot as a pagan rite. "My silly sister. What do you think you've been drinking? Who else had fed you?"

Lucy shook her head, uncomprehending, and not all Mina's embrace could hold her steady. "You? How—after what that monster," _that _monster, "did to you?"

"He took without asking. You take only what is freely given. What has always been yours to take."

"Then you..." Lucy couldn't think, could barely feel. Was this Mina propositioning her? She'd heard of such things, seen them in penny dreadfuls and opium smoke. But never imagined it happening to her. Never with Mina. Never could she be so blessed. "Then I'm not a sister to you? I'm something... more?" She whispered with the unspeakable hope of one who has never known what she wanted until she got a chance of having it.

Mina conquered her once more, leaving all resistance shattered. Scorched earth. "You are everything to me. Now can we get you out of this ruddy light, you're smoking like a factory house?"

The first thing they did inside was get Lucy a vial of blood. Upon gulping it down, she watched in a mirror-hazily-as her coloring returned to normal. For her.

"You could drink from the source," Mina said, watching the imbibing for the first time. She was allowed to for the first time. "It would be my pleasure."

Lucy shook her head, mouth full of the vial's contents. She managed to swallow, despite suddenly feeling sick to her stomach. "I could never do that to a sister. Much less..." She tried to think of a title for what Mina was to her. But in all her debauchery, she had never found a word suitable. "...to you."

"You misunderstand," Mina said simply. She left it at that as she unwound Lucy's bandage, her mere touch having Lucy submit to her.

Lucy shivered as the linen cleared her skin; it had happened a hundred times before, but her body picked up on some change in the aether. It filled up with heat, Mina's fingers ice-cold in comparison. Every touch along Lucy's skin sizzled like water evaporating in a desert.

"Please don't," Lucy said weakly. "It feels too good."

Mina smiled at her confidently, trustingly. Trying to assure her. And, with practiced motions but her eyes never leaving Lucy's, Mina wetted a cloth, wrung it out, and ran it along Lucy's wound. The warm water felt impossibly good now, every drop of water a poultice for her sickness. It didn't feel like nothing. It felt like everything. Tiny explosions in her skin. Warm breath on cold fingers. Silk underthings against her breasts…

With her mouth clenched shut, Lucy hummed and rocked in place. She refused to plead, to beg, though she desperately wished to follow through on Mina's insinuations. They sounded too good to be true; with a few minutes' history, they had the feel of fever dreams.

Mina loved her. How could Mina love her? She was horrible, bestial, a creature of the night! Hurting Mina all this time and not even knowing, let alone caring! How could she not have noticed?

Wouldn't she have wanted to notice?

Feeling a sudden need to prove something, or anything, Lucy reached for Mina. Her lips were parted, her fangs were out, but Mina simply held her firmly by the shoulder. And that was it. No cry of fright, no look of recrimination. And, on Lucy's part, not even the thought of brushing that hand away and taking what she wanted, in flesh or blood.

Instead, Mina eased Lucy down to the floor, pressing her flat on her back. Lucy went willingly. She saw Mina's stockings through the woman's torn skirt as Mina straddled her, knees resting on her hands to keep Lucy firmly placed.

Lucy just laid there, submissive, utterly, as Mina collected her roll of linen and carefully re-bandaged her neck. Each layer of bandage she applied put more pressure on the wound, sending more of its curious pleasure up to her full lips and down to her receptive bosom. As Mina tightened it into place, the ecstasy reached down all the way to Lucy's womanhood. She closed her eyes and thought she might swoon.

Only when she was satisfied of the bandage's finality did Mina begin to relieve Lucy of her dirty, wet clothes. "I know what you want… this time, I'm the experienced one, my darling sister."

Lucy consented to each stage of the undressing. Her overwhelming thought was of how smooth it all was, how thorough. Even the most rapturous of male companions had to admit to some unfamiliarity with the complexities of feminine cloth, had to fumble at some point in navigating the maze of petticoats and undergarments and corsets. Couplings had to either bypass fashion or rip through them.

But Mina was used to the same demanding wardrobe as Lucy. She knew how to slip each from Lucy in turn. It was as if she had trained from birth to be Lucy's suitor, her dowry paid from the first moment of their friendship onward.

Finally, Lucy was wholly unclad, more naked than she'd been with all but the most determined of her lovers. Somehow, that felt only right. And Mina joined her immediately, removing the nightgown to reveal not a scrap of clothing beneath. She was bare. Gloriously bare!

They embraced as if for the first time, Lucy feeling Mina's warmth penetrate down to the hollows of her soul. They kissed, again, again, again, until some devil of a thought had Lucy nipping at Mina's bottom lip, forcing Mina to drag it off Lucy's indecent teeth. And Mina merely smiled at that.

Once more, she held down Lucy's hands, now to bite down herself on Lucy's pale throat. Lucy cried out! An opera singer working at an aria, she bellowed to fill the nooks and crannies of the house with voiced evidence of most unlikely pleasure. For it didn't feel like everything. It felt like everything and _more_.

Mina returned to kissing her, this time with the taste of blood between them. Marking them as more than sisters, more than predator and prey, but something altogether new and unclassified in books or poem. Something both dirty and holy, damning and saving, pleasurable and agonizing, lovely in its ardor and painful in its intensity.

It had no name. It needed none.

"You see?" Mina asked her Lucy, the latter having licked her lips clean of her own life fluid. "I don't mind at all. I would do anything out of love for my sweet sister."

And with the hesitation wrung from her as thoroughly as water from a sponge, Lucy threw her Mina onto her back, mounted her, and drank deeply.

Afterward, they washed it down with wine and toasted sisterhood.


End file.
